Broken
by MonPetitChouchou
Summary: Follow Clarke's dark journey as she copes with the choices she made at Mount Weather and the betrayal that cut her to her core. Post Season 2. Clarke x Lexa. Planning on a multi-chapter fic, but will probably not go over 15K. We'll see. Rated M because who knows what's going to happen?


**Chapter 1**

Clarke awoke with a scream lodged in her throat and tears running down her dirt-smeared face. Shivers racked her body uncontrollably. Rolling onto her side she dry-heaved into the grass next to her bed pallet. Her insides screamed as they contracted, the rising bile leaving a sour taste in her mouth. She'd done this too many times to count, but she couldn't help it. In her mind she still saw _them_. Every evening the nightmares wreaked havoc on her mind. Images flashed behind her eyes: the children, dead at their dinner plates; the ugly blotches of inflamed, radiation-damaged skin; Maya's lifeless body cradled in Jasper's arms. They all blurred together, running a continuous, horrific loop in her head, night after night.

Slowly, her heartbeat returned to normal and she came back to herself. Looking around her shabby, one-man camp, Clarke suddenly felt the ache of loneliness stronger than any time since she'd left Camp Jaha months ago. Right now all she wanted was a warm body to cling to and someone to lull her back to sleep, whether it be her mother, or Bellamy, or Lex—

_No. Not her._

Clarke banished the thought from her head immediately. Lexa had made her choice back at Mount Weather when she'd betrayed them all, shoving the metaphorical knife so far into Clarke's back that she now wondered if the ruthless warrior had ever actually cared for her.

_It's all her fault_, Clarke repeated to herself for the hundredth time. If Lexa hadn't betrayed them, Clarke wouldn't have had to pull that lever. Those kids would never have died by her hand. The nightmares wouldn't plague her every night. If not for Lexa, she would be back with her people. Unbroken. Determined. Whole.

Instead, Clarke curled in on herself, pulling her knees to her chest, and forced her mind back to sleep, thoughts of war paint, and spears, and a certain commander's face floating through her head before she finally succumbed to the darkness.

†††

Surviving on her own was a lot harder than Clarke had ever imagined it would be. When she'd set out from Camp Jaha she'd had no idea just how difficult a journey she was in for. It quickly became apparent, though, that she was in way over her head. It took months of trial and error, of nearly starving to death, before she'd finally got the hang of hunting, fishing, and roughing it in the wild. Back at the drop ship her job had been to heal people. Give her stab wounds, poison victims, you name it, and she could handle it. But tell her to go out and take down a buck or catch a trout with her bare hands? She was clueless. Fortunately, Clarke was proficient in anything she set her mind to, and this had been no exception. She'd learned to mimic the Grounder way of life and was convinced Octavia and Lincoln would be proud of her new skill set.

The sun was just beginning to rise over the horizon as Clarke blinked awake, lazing in her bed pallet for a moment; the harrowing nightmares were forgotten, for now. Back on the Ark, she had always been a late sleeper, sometimes running late to her classes, getting admonishing looks from Wells as she would stumble into their advanced arithmetic class. On the ground, though, she had forced herself to become an early riser. Sleeping left you vulnerable, and vulnerable meant getting killed.

So instead of enjoying the warm glow of the sunrise, Clarke busied herself with eating breakfast: dried meat from a day or two ago, carefully sealed in her knapsack, some foraged greens, and a handful of berries. Not bad, compared to the times she'd gone hungry.

Munching on her breakfast, Clarke looked around the dense forest that surrounded her. Since leaving Camp Jaha, she'd wandered for months. At first, the challenge of surviving had left her exhausted, physically and mentally, and had been a good distraction. She had absolutely no idea where was. She could be halfway across the continent by now, or she could have been walking in circles this whole time. She found that she didn't really care either way. There was a lot that Clarke didn't care about these days.

Before packing up her camp for the day, Clarke took out a weathered leather-bound journal and began scribbling in it earnestly. It was how she kept track of the days. Currently, it was Day #73 of her self-imposed banishment. The journal was mostly filled with accounts of her journey. Sometimes, after a particularly bad one, Clarke wrote about her nightmares, along with how much she missed her friends, and how out-of-touch she felt.

After fitting every one of her worldly possessions into her ratty knapsack, Clarke tucked a knife into her boot and grabbed her hunting spear. Then, she walked.

And walked.

And walked.

And walked.

She craved this monotony. This peace from the horrific images seared into her brain. She couldn't find it anywhere else.

She guessed it was about midday when she stopped to refill her canteen at a small creek. The sun was shining directly overtop her head, filtering down through the green foliage above her and casting playful shadows on her bare forearms. The sun felt like absolute heaven after eighteen years stuck up in the cold vacuum of space.

The snap of a twig and the rustle of bushes suddenly snapped Clarke out of her peaceful reverie, though. Quickly, she backed up against a tree, pulling out her stowed knife swiftly. Her eyes scanned the forest, looking for something out of place. Just as the apprehension was killing her, a large racoon darted out from behind a bush and waddled over to the stream for a drink. Clarke's racing heartbeat began to slow down, sure that the danger was gone.

"So jumpy," Clarke mumbled to herself, slipping her knife back into her boot.

Turning back to the cool, enticing stream, Clarke was eager for another drink, but the hard butt of a gun suddenly cracked her across the temple. Stars swam in her vision as she tried to punch her attacker to no avail. The last thing she saw before blacking out was an eerily familiar face.

_Emerson_.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Thanks for checking this fic out. I confess that this is my first time writing in the 100 universe. The only other story I have is about Avatar: The Last Airbender, so not at all related. This is going to be a Clexa story, so if that is a problem for you, go ahead and find another fic to read. I don't plan on this being a long, epic story; it's just basically my own personal writing outlet to tide me over during this loooong 7-month hiatus. Also, I'm pretty unreliable with updates, just gonna put that out there. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this first installment, and by the way Emerson is the asshole guard from Mount Weather that survived, in case you forgot and were confused by the ending of the first chapter.


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